Rick Steves’ Travel Journal is literally an open book. Containing 182 lined pages and 16 blank pages for sketching, it is the ultimate companion for your trip abroad. Lightweight and portable, it can be stashed in a bag or suitcase effortlessly and taken out whenever you want to capture a moment with a thought or enclose a souvenir within its pages. Inside, travelers can find a color map of Europe, calendars for 2009 through 2012, a personal message from globetrotting Steves himself and a European telephone calling chart. Its inner pocket attached to the back of the cover gives ample room to keep train tickets, photographs, stickers or anything else worth bringing home with you. Its moleskine-like exterior works hard to protect the content sandwiched in between the front and back covers.

The act of travel is liberating and, as Steves points out, “Travel can make you a poet. Travel can be spiritual. You meet people on the road you’d never meet otherwise. Traveling rearranges your cultural furniture, challenging truths you assumed were self-evident and God-given. By traveling, you learn not only about the people and places you visit—you learn about yourself.”

Capturing a moment in time, Rick Steves’ Travel Journal gives you permission to reflect on your journey as many times as you desire. Practice your descriptive skills and write about the people you encountered, the places you visited, the foods you ate and the things you wished you would or wouldn’t have said in a crowd full of people. Draw the inns and villages, the children and the marketplaces teeming over with fresh produce while creating the ultimate keepsake that you will come to cherish years after unpacking your suitcase. Published by Avalon Travel, a member of Perseus Books Group, the durable book is a little larger than the typical novel but far more fun because you get to write the story.